


It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-13
Updated: 2005-08-13
Packaged: 2019-05-15 15:22:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14793006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."





	It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)**

**by: Delightfully Eccentric**

**Pairing(s):** CJ/Toby  
**Rating:** ADULT  
**Disclaimer:** The West Wing characters and histories aren't mine, and are used here for love, not money.  
**Summary:** "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."  
**Author's Note:** The quote at the beginning's William Blake's; title's Bob Dylan's; other allusions to pop culture etc are too insignificant to list. 

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." 

  
He feels her presence but does not raise his head. 

Outside the door, standing in the dimmest spot between two wall-mounted lamps, she settles in for the duration. 

Forty minutes tick past before he checks to see if she is still there. 

She blinks once. 

He breaks the look and throws a few loose-leaf papers into his briefcase; it will take Ginger or Bonnie an age to sort them back into the right order in the morning. 

She is several yards down the corridor by the time he makes it to the door but she makes no attempt to outpace him and soon he is in silent step beside her. 

** 

When she nods and says good night to one of the guards at the entrance, her voice is somewhat startling and he realises how long it's been since they've talked. Probably a good thing. 

He turns his head to her and makes a noise in the back of his throat like he's about to say something unwise but she doesn't look, and lengthens her stride. 

He is breathing a little heavily by the time they reach the parking lot. Their cars are the only two left. He glances at his, but hers has leather seats. 

She bends, once he is firmly ensconced in the passenger seat, and bestows upon him a kiss which is ironically chaste. 

He almost brushes her hand when she reaches to switch the car into drive but thinks better of it. 

He is not fooled into believing she forgives him and she is not fooled into thinking he is sorry. 

** 

The old apartment, forty-two stairs from the street, is where she lays her scene. 

It doesn't take long to lock the door, close the curtains, find the bedroom. 

There is an angry red mark on his face before he has so much as taken off his jacket. He remains calm. Her palm stings more than his cheek anyway. 

She makes a frustrated animal cry. Shh, he says, and kisses her knee on his way to pulling her legs from under her. 

She falls back onto the bed. Soft landing. She wants him to put up a fight and knows he won't. 

She neither resists nor assists as he pushes her dead weight further up the bed and works her pants down her legs. 

It does not escape his attention that she has begun to cry before he has even finished peeling her pantyhose off with all the delicacy he employs in writing a State of the Union address. 

He considers hushing her, but she is too angry to look at him and it will not help matters. 

He finishes his task then stands and looks down at her, sobbing and snarling and naked from the waist down. 

He removes his belt. 

** 

When he returns with hands clasped around a steaming mug, she is lying absolutely still in exactly the position in which he left her. Her eyes are open and dry and she does not make a sound. 

He puts a hand on her thigh to confirm life. She doesn't blink. 

He unwraps her fingers from the side of the mattress and presses them into a curl around the mug. 

She growls to life and drives the ball of her hand into his chest so hard that he loses his balance and ends up staring at the ceiling. 

"'Cause caffeine is exactly what I need at this time of the fucking night!" 

He wheezes, "It's cocoa," from the floor. 

"Oh." 

He can hear her sniffing with great suspicion, as if he must either be lying about the content or have spiked it. She'll drink it anyway. 

He is not the only one who will not apologise. 

** 

Watching, waiting, wilting, words. 

Always with him it's something depressing beginning with 'w'. Intermittently there's a dose of wanting in the mix too, usually from across a room. Now they're together and nude and he watches her wilt. She waits for the inevitable words. 

He perches on the edge of the bed watching her drink. It irritates her. He knows irritation is something he can get around, and it serves the purpose of distracting her from everything about him that hurts her. 

"Don't." More of a plea than a command. Too tired now to provoke a fight out of him. 

If he hadn't exhausted his supply of decency on politics, he'd let her be. 

Always watching when she makes a mistake, but he sets more store by her successes. He isn't sure she notices that. 

He lets his hand wander across the sheets and squeeze her knee. 

He lowers his eyes as she sets down the mug. 

** 

He thinks that maybe if he is generous then she will be grateful. 

She parts for him and he runs his fingers around the general vicinity of her sex. Close but no cigar, so to speak. 

He knows he should be capable of thinking of something nice to say that she might believe but there is nothing, so he just says, "I love you." 

She goes limp, which he believes is the approximate body language equivalent of, "Whatever." 

** 

If he's going down on her he can't be watching her. That is a good thing. 

She mouths black-hearted curses on his head while he tongues her slit. Nothing she hasn't screamed to his face before, but this is his manner of kindness and she is usually noted for her graciousness. 

She starts off mild and he starts off slow, seeking attention. She doesn't fight the reaction and he takes this as encouragement. 

Her fingers twisted around the headboard, iron digging into her palms. He's worrying at her lips, just letting her know he's there. Flesh tender enough for the tickling of his beard to make her jump. 

Wearing down her fingernails on the wrought iron, she won't ask him for more. 

He teases her opening; she can feel a nudge from his nose before he shifts into a more breathable position. Involuntarily her pelvis chases him and he holds her off with the tip of his tongue on her clit. He inhales. 

She makes a noise that's not unfriendly; counters it by uttering darker words as he warms to his task. He's always been good at this, strong, insistent and just gentle enough to allow her to forgive herself for enjoying it, if not him for making her. 

Her body tenses and contorts against her will; his is weighing the bed down, it creaks. There's an exaggerated sensation of swinging from side to side as he varies his tongue-strokes, indulging every piece of her he can touch, to make up for everywhere he can't reach, only it doesn't. 

He's always been good at this and she feels intoxicated as she fights to air the dirtiest laundry she can come up with before he pushes her so far that she forgets to hate him, and before her voice cracks. Neither is far away. 

They both know it'll be over soon; she braces herself and bites her lips until she tastes a drop of blood. He kisses her where she needs it and in a climactic twist rips the tension from her. 

For some thirty seconds she manages not to think at all. He draws back as if to allow her body privacy to dance its response. 

The salt water is dry on her cheeks and her pillow by the time she can breathe again. 

** 

She was looking at him the wrong way for so long that she isn't at all sure she isn't still. 

Something's wrong, must be or they wouldn't be here. They're never together when they're happy, not recently. The price of intimacy through trying times: they have seen the worst of each other and associate it with the worst of themselves, and the worst of the world. He might smile when she sings and leer when she dances, but there has to be blood before they'll both pay attention. 

For such a long time she thought it cowardice that he cared so much for words and so little for action. Why he'd call and argue polling data with more passion than she'd associate with phone sex rather than come round and make himself an adulterer. 

She's never thought much of words; she finds them too easy to weave from thin air, she thinks, there's nothing in the world to say they have to be real. Acts are much harder to fake. Surely that should lend them meaning. 

The clichés taunt her mind: actions speak louder than words; the pen is mightier than the sword; sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. 

Her theories don't work with him. She's yet to find anything that does, but it's particularly galling when he fucks with logic because he's supposed to be the mechanical one: grammar, sentence structure, strategy, sacrifice of the individual for the greater good. 

She doesn't understand how he can betray any of them with a look, a sidestep, a gesture - but he can't speak a false word and sound convincing. And none of the words, true or false, come easily to him. He courts them like he doesn't need to court her. Maybe that's how he can have more respect for words than for people. 

But perhaps it has nothing to do with respect. Perhaps it's simply that words are the ones he loves. 

** 

He hates it when she cries during lovemaking, so it's a relief that she's calmer in the fallout of her orgasm. It's something he's always resented being made to feel guilt about. She wants to be there and if she doesn't he can't figure it out for her. 

He hates the crying, but he likes the trembling just a bit. 

Her hips rock because his hands are on them, pulling her in time to his rhythm, which should be faster by now but her detachment's distracting him. 

Other than that she stays mostly still. His momentum as he makes his pleasure shifts her body a little but there's no denying this has become a largely solitary activity. 

Her eyes have been vacant ever since he raised his tired head from his intimate ministrations and searched her face for a softening. 

Though he feels he's done his bit, he shifts his centre of gravity with her thighs pressed around him to find the balance to maintain his back-and-forth motion without pulling her body to match his. Thus his hands are freed to try to bring her back to life. 

The swell of her chest cupped in his hand brings a quickening to his groin; he plunges hard as he flicks the nipple. He would move to kiss her breasts but he has too much to do in his current location. 

His other hand comes into play when he pulls back. It isn't difficult to find her clit, still sensitive, and although he is by now too excited to pay too much attention to technique, he does his best to stimulate while he has sufficient coordination left. 

It's a poor reward when he feels his fingers being prised from her breast, but the next thing he feels is her lips brushing the tips, then the warmth of her mouth. She grunts around his fingers as he swells inside her, the first sound she's made since she came. 

It is frustrating in the extreme when her response subsides. Her cheeks are still flushed and her breathing shallow but her eyes flutter into three languorous blinks before closing altogether. 

He's almost there and he is far from happy with the fact that the woman beneath him is, to all intents and purposes, asleep. 

"Don't," he gasps a harsh urgent breath, stretched deep within her and knowing there can't be long left. 

Concern gives way to impatience when it comes to expression in his tone of voice. 

She responds then, an involuntary upwards thrust of her pelvis coinciding with furiously-opened eyes and a transformed visage. 

He's shocked by the speckles of hatred amid all the indignation and thinks he is going to be put off but the moment the thought crosses his mind he comes, forgetting her entirely as he floods against her, pulsing around him at last. 

Gasping, yes, yes, why should he leave her when she can make him feel like this. 

But when his heartbeat's started to slow and the cloak of bliss is slipping from his shoulders, her eyes are shut, her head is turned to the pillow and she isn't even trembling any more. 

** 

He's never been good at dignified exits, or he'd have stayed gone the first time. 

In the middle of the night he wriggles out from under the covers and is at the top of the stairwell before he remembers he didn't bring his car. 

She has worn him too well to face a moonlit walk so he teases the bedroom door open. 

Her eyes are open, flickering points of dark-light, and they broadcast the fact that she does not forgive him around the room until it reverberates off the walls. 

Again they say nothing, and when he lies back down beside her she puts an arm across his middle but all he can feel in her skin is the pinch of non-forgiveness. 

Sometimes he thinks he could save them if he would learn how to say he's sorry. 

Maybe he could save them both if he left. He knows it's not going to happen. 

And the truly poignant thing is that he might even love her and still they treat each other this way. 

After, she wonders why he puts up with this. 

And if she can't run, and she can't forgive, it might not preclude her being touched by gratitude. 

End. 


End file.
